Operational and Project Management Analysis: Walmart Inc Case Study

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of operational and project management practices within Walmart Inc. It begins with an introduction to operations and project management, emphasizing their importance in aligning business operations with the company's vision. The main body of the report delves into specific challenges faced by Walmart, including the impacts of globalization on its operations, the complexities of workforce management across 27 countries, and the increasing demands of sustainability. Furthermore, the report examines the effects of various operational management practices, such as Just-in-Time techniques and cross-docking, highlighting both their advantages and disadvantages. The analysis incorporates functional examples to illustrate the issues and potential solutions, concluding with a summary of key findings and recommendations for continuous improvement and adaptation in the competitive market. The report emphasizes the need for Walmart to update its operational practices regularly, implement new technologies, and prioritize employee development to achieve long-term sustainability and success.

Operational and Project Management

Contents
Contents...........................................................................................................................................2
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
Operation management is a process of managing overall activities which comes under production
process and redesign on a continuous basis with the aim of attaining highest efficiency and high
utilisation of available resources (Xu, 2018). Primary objective of operation management is to
conduct business operations which will be align with company’s vision and mission in the
market. On the other hand, project management refers to a set of principles, procedures and
activities which company must run their operation process. For this report, Walmart Inc is taken
for consideration which is one of the largest retail market chain in United states of America as
well as in the world. Company was founded in 1962 and have been managing more than 2.2
million people worldwide with the revenue of 524 billion dollars approximately. Different issues
which are faced by company in terms of operations will be discussed and how it could be
eliminated in the first place.
MAIN BODY
Main objective of operation department is to improve company’s productivity and
efficiency by reducing overall operational cost so that profit margin would be improved without
compromising with the quality of goods. But due to ever changing external and internal
environment, it becomes complex for companies to conduct their operations with the same
strategies. Different issues which are faced by Walmart and how they cope up with that is
explained below with functional example,
Globalisation: Globalisation refers to a process of conducting business in foreign companies
with the aim of getting higher profitability and market share in the competitive market. This
concept assist companies to increase their productivity worldwide but it also affects their
business negatively (Farr & Bailey, 2019). For instance, Walmart started their business from
America with the small store but due to increase in needs and demands of customers, company
start expanding their operations in various areas. After satisfying local demands, company starts
selling their product in different countries which considers as globalisation. Entering into other
market helps company to capture more market share which automatically increases company’s
profitability and productivity. Like nearly each week, Walmart caters products and services to
265 million customers from their 11,500 stores due to which company has been able to attain
higher profit as compare to different companies (Zerjav, Edkins & Davies, 2018). But on the

other, Walmart also faces operation issues due to high competitions, laws and regulations in
different countries, technology issues etc which hampers their performance in a negative way.
For instance, company needs to lower down their profit margin due to high competitions due to
which they faces losses on a regular basis. In other example, company started selling their
products on online platform as other company’s starts attracting customers from all around the
world due to which Walmart’s invested millions of dollars on online platform without getting the
surety of getting profit from it (Coetzer & Gibbison, 2016). So overall, Walmart must assess
their external environment with the help of concepts like PESTLE, Porters five forces models or
VRIO etc so that future obstacle would be identified before it affects company’s performance
(Artto, Ahola & Vartiainen, 2016) .
Workforce: It is well known in the market that employees are considered as assets in
manufacturing or in retail industry as they are the one who works hardly to attain company’s
vision i.e., fulfilling of stakeholders expectations (Meredith, Mantel Jr & Shafer, 2017). As firm
is currently working in 27 countries, they have to manage their workforce accordingly as every
country as different rules and regulations of employees which needs to be fulfilled by
management if they want to conduct their business smoothly. For instance, Walmart have to pay
around 15 dollars per hour to their labour force in United States due to which company profit
margin in US is low as compare to India or Africa as basic pay of labour is low according to their
way of life (Davies & Brady, 2016). This factor directly affects firm operation in a negative way
as it requires money more money which is a opposite of operation management objective i.e.,
higher profitability. Apart from this, employee’s retention rate is also one of issues faced by
Walmart as they have the highest employee turnover ratio which is not at all good for company’s
profitability. For instance, if employees are leaving the organisation on a continuous basis then
they have to hire other employees to satisfy their needs which require money. Moreover, training
and development sessions, money invested for acquiring employees, higher salary, inculcation of
skills and capabilities in employees requires high amount of money which leads to lower
profitability and profit margin (Martens & Carvalho, 2017) .
To reduce and eliminate this issue, company must start implement various practices like
consultation of employees for their needs and demands from company, training and development
sessions according to employees present skill set, proper brake and fun time so that they don’t
get frustrated from the workplace, favourable workplace, healthy and safety work environment,

perks and benefits to employees which act as a catalyst for motivation etc. By this way,
employees will become organisation loyal for longer period of time thus lower employees
turnover rate which leads to higher profitability and efficient operations (Padalkar & Gopinath,
2016).
Sustainability: Sustainability is a concept of efficient working of operations without putting
available and limited resources at risk. There are three sustainability pillars which needs to
manage and maintained by company i.e., social, environment and economic which requires large
amount of capital in the first place (Bhuvaneswari & et al., 2019). For instance, for attaining
environment sustainability, Walmart needs to invest in latest technology and system which
produces less carbon footprint which ends up in Increases Company’s expenses thus lower
overall profit in a year. Apart from this, social sustainability includes higher wages or salary for
employees, pollution free working, quality of life to society etc which also ends up in increasing
company’s expenses (Vijayaraghavan, 2018). Overall, increase concern of sustainability is
lowering down the profitability of company which can be seen from their operating income as it
touches 20 billion dollars mark which is lower as compare to their past trends. All these factors
provide long term benefits instead of shorter period (Yang, Zhao & Lan, 2016).
These issues can be resolve through practices like improving employees skill set so that
higher productivity would be attain, latest technology which lower down the operation cost of
Walmart thus higher profitability, continuous investment in quality of life so that higher
customer share would be attain (Sun, Liu & Zhang, 2019) .
Operation management practices: Every practices implement by company in their operations
has positive as well as negative sides which need to face by firm. For instance, Just in Time
techniques assist company to reduce their inventory and material handling cost which leads to
higher profit margin (Vítková, Chovancová & Veselý, 2017). But on the other hand, risk of
running out of stock, higher sensitivity to error which might affect overall operational work of
Walmart, in adjustment to different kind of demands in different situations etc. Other practice
which has implemented by Walmart is cross docking of materials so that company does not need
to invest in infrastructure, human resources, technology, material handling cost etc. But on the
opposite side, there are some disadvantages also like freight handling is riskier and expensive in
nature for such less time, might not deliver the product on time due to systematic error, strict and
continuous monitoring of management is requires which is time consuming and expensive etc.

So overall, every practices implemented by company has positive and negative sides which
company needs to deal with if they want to acquire their overall mission (Löhr & et al., 2018).
To remove this issues, Walmart must assess the problems which they are facing in their
process and try to eliminate it with new technologies so that company operational unit won’t get
affected from it. Besides this, skilful employees must be hired by them in the first place so that
no such issues would be arising while working. At last, Walmart must modify their operations
practices on a continuous basis so that overall sustainability of the working operations would be
attain by them through efficient operations in the competitive market (Vidoni, Cunico &
Vecchietti, 2020).

CONCLUSION
As from the above mentioned information, it can be summarise that company can survive
in the market for longer period of time if they update their operation management practices on a
regular basis. Besides this, implementation of new technology and methods will assist company
to perform better in the market thus competitive edge over other competitors. To accomplish it,
companies must be aware about the issues they are facing and could be facing in the future and
identify ways through which it would be avoided so that organisation productivity and efficiency
won’t get affected from it.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
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operations: Managing projects for value creation throughout the system lifecycle.
International Journal of Project Management, 34(2), 258-270.
Bhuvaneswari, J., Thiyagarajan, G., Manikandan, M., Natarajan, S. K., Thenmozhi, S., &
Prabhakaran, N. K. (2019). Operational research project on drip fertigation in sugarcane.
Coetzer, G., & Gibbison, G. (2016). Mediating influence of time management on the relationship
between adult attention deficit and the operational effectiveness of project managers.
Journal of Management Development.
Davies, A., & Brady, T. (2016). Explicating the dynamics of project capabilities. International
Journal of Project Management, 34(2), 314-327.
Farr, M., & Bailey, D. (2019). Uniting business continuity management and operational risk
management. Journal of business continuity & emergency planning, 12(4), 294-300.
Löhr, K., Bonatti, M., Homem, L. H. I. R., Schlindwein, S. L., & Sieber, S. (2018). Operational
challenges in collaborative research projects. Kybernetes.
Martens, M. L., & Carvalho, M. M. (2017). Key factors of sustainability in project management
context: A survey exploring the project managers' perspective. International Journal of
Project Management, 35(6), 1084-1102.
Meredith, J. R., Mantel Jr, S. J., & Shafer, S. M. (2017). Project management: a managerial
approach. John Wiley & Sons.
Padalkar, M., & Gopinath, S. (2016). Are complexity and uncertainty distinct concepts in project
management? A taxonomical examination from literature. International Journal of Project
Management, 34(4), 688-700.
Sun, C., Liu, Y., & Zhang, T. (2019, May). Research on Operational Performance Evaluation
System of Urban Waste Treatment PPP Project Based on AHP. In IOP Conference
Series: Earth and Environmental Science (Vol. 267, No. 4, p. 042067). IOP Publishing.
Vidoni, M., Cunico, L., & Vecchietti, A. (2020). Agile operational research. Journal of the
Operational Research Society, 1-15.

Vijayaraghavan, V. (2018, October). Operational Readiness and Operational Safety on FPSO
Project. In SPE Asia Pacific Oil and Gas Conference and Exhibition. Society of
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Vítková, E., Chovancová, J., & Veselý, D. (2017). Value Driver and Its Impact on Operational
Profit in Construction Company. Procedia computer science, 121, 364-369.
Xu, J. (2018, August). Advancement of Operational Management, Project Management, Green
Supply Chain, Industry Strategy Management Based on the Twelfth ICMSEM
Proceedings. In International Conference on Management Science and Engineering
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Yang, K., Zhao, R., & Lan, Y. (2016). Impacts of uncertain project duration and asymmetric risk
sensitivity information in project management. International Transactions in operational
research, 23(4), 749-774.
Zerjav, V., Edkins, A., & Davies, A. (2018). Project capabilities for operational outcomes in
inter-organisational settings: The case of London Heathrow Terminal 2. International
Journal of Project Management, 36(3), 444-459.